welcome to Animal Lovers! My daughter was stationed at Damneck and her husband Norfolk. It's such a beautiful area with so much going on. How ingenious to take a dump , call it Mt. Trashmore and have it be a popular hiking site. A great place to start is with the food and fitness tracker. The food tracker allows you to chose a menu or have Spark supply one. You can see your calorie, fat, protein and carb intake. There's a spot for your water too. The fitness tracker allows you to see how many calories you have burned. They will set up your strength exercises or you can choose your own. They have a list of cardio to choose from and a map it tool that I love. I go out for a walk and when I get back I map it and it tells me how far I went. We have a monthly challenge on the team page. Feel free to join in any time. Everyone here is friendly and very helpful.

Welcome to shutterbugs…. Hi!! So glad you joined us in our Shuttlebug team! We have so much fun on this team. We love to share our photos with each other and to comment on them.

Please check in the General Discussion section for the Photo Assignments. Each assignment has complete directions in the very first post of the assignment which will be on page one, scroll to the bottom of the page. We have a new one each week and they are a lot of fun. Sometimes they can be a challenge too!! You are welcome to add pictures to any of the assignments.

If you have any questions be sure and ask, either on a team or you are welcome to email me. I will be looking forward to seeing your photos!! JO

In my experience, SparkPeople is like a in some ways - it's lots of fun and easy to make friends because we're all in this together. I like the way a HEALTHY LIFESTYLE is emphasized instead of a 'quick fix wonder diet' - it's about waaaaaay more than 'just' losing weight so you have definitely come to the right place!

If you ever need any help using features of the site, there are tutorial videos under the HELP section that can show you how to use the features of the site. You can also find them on the START page and several other places on the site.

If you haven't discovered The Spark book and/or the SparkDiet linked at the bottom of the START page, check them out - the program is simple but extremely effective. There is a TON of information on this site - so much it might even seem overwhelming but fortunately we don't have to 'digest' everything at once! The FastBreak program is a good way to start.

Another nice thing about SparkPeople is that we have permission to be human - we don't have to change everything at once or be in a hurry to reach our goals. Take a few baby steps and then a few more and before you know it, you'll have completed a long journey - I hope you enjoy this community as much as I do - it teaches us how to make positive lifetime changes because that's the only thing that will work over time!

Every journey begins with the first step and you have made a great first step by joining Spark. You are going to love it here!! I highly recommend joining a few teams to meet some of our members to share ideas and get added support when you need it. Good luck in reaching your goal!!